Last of the Giants


Book Description

Today, an ancient world is vanishing right before our eyes: the age of giant animals. Over 40,000 years ago, the earth was ruled by megafauna: mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and giant sloths. Of course, those creatures no longer exist, and there is only one likely reason for that: the evolution and arrival of the earth's only tool-wielding hunter, the wildly adaptive, comparatively pint-sized human species. Many more of the world's biggest and baddest creatures—including the black rhino, the dodo, giant tortoises, and the great auk—have vanished since our world became truly global. Last of the Giants chronicles those giant animals and apex predators pushed to extinction in the modern era. The book also highlights those giant species that remain—even though many barely survive, living in such low numbers that they are on the brink of leaving this world within the next few decades. However, there is hope, for many endangered species can still be saved. As it profiles each extinct and endangered animal, Last of the Giants focuses on the conservation efforts that are trying to preserve the world's remaining charismatic species before they are lost forever.




Rise of the Giants


Book Description

Angels and giants and beasties. Oh my?In life, Dean Robinson was a soldier. Upon his untimely death at the hand of a fallen angel with a serious superiority complex and snappy wardrobe, he became something else.Not quite an angel but no longer human, Dean was unwillingly thrust into the prophetic pinnacle of a timeless battle raging in the shadows of the Earth and the Heavens in which he and his newfound gang of arcane sidekicks might be the only thing standing between mankind and an incursion of otherworldly giants. No pressure?Semi-divine super soldiers, supersized bad guys on high protein diets, a Heavenly grudge match played out on an Earthly stage - Just another day at the office apparently.STEVE GILMORE is a former Army Ranger and graduate of West Point. His urban fantasy novels are a distinctive blend of military grit and apocryphal lore that have been enjoyed by readers around the world. His books are recommended for readers who enjoy Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, Kevin Hearn's Iron Druid, or Steve McHugh's Hellequin Chronicles.________________________________What people are saying about Steve Gilmore and RISE OF THE GIANTS:????? "A supernatural thrill ride!"????? "Shocking, hilarious, explosive - it's been too long since I got sucked into a book this way."????? "It's like Lord of the Rings with Rambo and Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, and Chuck Norris in it. I highly recommend it as an enjoyable read that also sparks some deep thinking."????? "Intensely awesome! This book has it all, action, adventure, and humor."????? "It was a mix of many disparate elements: conflict between good and evil and the complexities that play into distinguishing the two; salty, earthy soldier's wit contrasted with mind-blowing metaphysical concepts; most important, musings on the importance of beer!"




Fall of Giants


Book Description

Ken Follett’s magnificent historical epic begins as five interrelated families move through the momentous dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage. A thirteen-year-old Welsh boy enters a man’s world in the mining pits. . . . An American law student rejected in love finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House. . . . A housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy. . . . And two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution. From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families—and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again. . . .




The Last Giants


Book Description

From the award-winning explorer, “an entertaining summary of what we know about the elephant, and a call to change our behavior to ensure its survival” (Daily Mail). The Last Giants satisfies British explorer Levison Wood’s lifelong desire to learn more about the majestic African elephant. These giants trek through some of Africa’s most magnificent landscapes as they go in search of life-giving waters and pastures. El Nino’s droughts and an insatiable ivory trade have cut African elephant numbers by a third in the last decade alone, and if elephants disappear entirely, Africa’s entire ecosystem could collapse. But Botswana has become a safe haven, where one-sixth of the world’s elephants now reside. Each year their numbers grow and an incredible migration takes place, which Wood witnesses and records. He teams up with local trackers to gain insight into how this iconic species survives, camps out in the wild, meets the people and tribes living on the migration’s path, and joins the park rangers whose job it is to protect these land goliaths, equipped with his “good eye for detail and better ear for dialogue” (The Wall Street Journal). “Adventurer Wood followed elephants on a 650-mile migration across Botswana for a British television program. This fascinating companion volume to that series examines the past, present, and future of the African elephant.” —Library Journal (starred review) “A smart, inviting portrait of elephants from a keen-eyed observer.” —Kirkus Reviews “A rewarding look at the habits and habitats of the African elephant . . . Comprehensively yet accessibly conveying Wood’s lifelong fascination with African elephants, his discussion will appeal to anyone keen on learning more about them.” —Publishers Weekly




Rising Titans, Falling Giants


Book Description

As a rising great power flexes its muscles on the political-military scene it must examine how to manage its relationships with states suffering from decline; and it has to do so in a careful and strategic manner. In Rising Titans, Falling Giants Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson focuses on the policies that rising states adopt toward their declining competitors in response to declining states’ policies, and what that means for the relationship between the two. Rising Titans, Falling Giants integrates disparate approaches to realism into a single theoretical framework, provides new insight into the sources of cooperation and competition in international relations, and offers a new empirical treatment of great power politics at the start and end of the Cold War. Shifrinson challenges the existing historical interpretations of diplomatic history, particularly in terms of the United States-China relationship. Whereas many analysts argue that these two nations are on a collision course, Shifrinson declares instead that rising states often avoid antagonizing those in decline, and highlights episodes that suggest the US-China relationship may prove to be far less conflict-prone than we might expect.




Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay


Book Description

The recent economic rise of China and India has attracted a great deal of attention. Yet, many of the views regarding their market reforms and high growth have been tendentious, exaggerated, or oversimplified. Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay scrutinizes the phenomenal rise of both nations and demolishes the myths that have accumulated around the economic achievements of these two giants in the last quarter-century. Exploring the challenges that both countries must overcome to become true leaders in the international economy, Pranab Bardhan looks beyond short-run macroeconomic issues to examine structures, and current general performance. Full of valuable insights, Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay provides a nuanced picture of China and India's complex political economy at a time of startling global reconfiguration and change.




Lost Race of the Giants


Book Description

An exploration of mythological and archaeological evidence for prehistoric giants • Examines the many corresponding giant mythologies throughout the world, such as the Greek and Roman titans, Norse frost giants, and the biblical Nephilim • Reveals recent finds of giant skeletons in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and India • Explains how giants passed on their sophisticated culture and civilization to humanity before being wiped out in the great age of cataclysms and floods Giants are a cornerstone of the myths, legends, and traditions of almost every culture on Earth. Stories of giants are often considered fantasies of the ancients or primitive attempts to explain natural phenomena, but archaeological discoveries of 10- and 12-foot skeletons--many of which have been suppressed--confirm the existence of a forgotten golden age of giants before recorded history. Patrick Chouinard examines the staggering number of corresponding giant mythologies throughout the world, such as the Greek and Roman titans, Norse frost giants, the Hindu Daityas, the biblical Nephilim, the Celtic Formorach, the Sumerian Anunnaki, and the multitude of myths in which the sky or world is held aloft on the shoulders of a giant. He links these stories to Atlantis as well as other legends of prehistoric civilizations lost to cataclysm and great floods whose survivors spawned the rise of ancient civilizations. The author reveals how physical remains of giant-size peoples have been found on almost every continent, including recent finds in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and northern India as well as hundreds of excavations of giant mummies and skeletons across the United States, corresponding directly with Native American accounts of red-haired giants. He also examines reports from famous explorers such as Magellan, Sir Francis Drake, and Desoto of their encounters with giants on the North American continent. Revealing how giants represent the true earthborn race, Chouinard explains how they engaged in open conflict with the extraterrestrial gods who created humanity for forced labor and how they passed their sophisticated culture and civilization on to humanity before being nearly wiped out in the great age of cataclysms.




Giants of Garbage


Book Description

Harold Crooks chronicles the history of waste management, showing how an ideology of privatization set the stage for the local refuse collection business to become a global corporate enterprise. The author tracks the emergence of the multinational firms that dominate the business and examines how governments fail to cope with the waste disposal needs of growing populations. He discusses the emergence of a citizens' counter-movement, communities standing up to the troubling consequences of contemporary waste disposal--huge incinerators spewing toxic metals into the atmosphere, dumps that leak toxins into the groundwater, and hazardous waste sites that must be monitored indefinitely. Giants of Garbage is a clear-eyed analysis of one of the largest and most persistent environmental issues facing Canadians today.




Giants


Book Description

A look at the top 300 most powerful players in world capitalism, who are at the controls of our economic future. Who holds the purse strings to the majority of the world's wealth? There is a new global elite at the controls of our economic future, and here former Project Censored director and media monitoring sociologist Peter Phillips unveils for the general reader just who these players are. The book includes such power players as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, and Warren Buffett. As the number of men with as much wealth as half the world fell from sixty-two to just eight between January 2016 and January 2017, according to Oxfam International, fewer than 200 super-connected asset managers at only 17 asset management firms—each with well over a trillion dollars in assets under management—now represent the financial core of the world's transnational capitalist class. Members of the global power elite are the management—the facilitators—of world capitalism, the firewall protecting the capital investment, growth, and debt collection that keeps the status quo from changing. Each chapter in Giants identifies by name the members of this international club of multi-millionaires, their 17 global financial companies—and including NGOs such as the Group of Thirty and the Trilateral Commission—and their transnational military protectors, so the reader, for the first time anywhere, can identify who constitutes this network of influence, where the wealth is concentrated, how it suppresses social movements, and how it can be redistributed for maximum systemic change.




Fortress of the Stone Giants


Book Description

Driven to battle by a maniacal warlord, the once-peaceful Stone Giants of the Storval Plateau threaten to destroy the sleepy town of Sandpoint.